Beginners Guide to Affiliate Marketing

gh05

Really helpful thread! I've tried adsense and may try this in future when i get more time.

borders_dude

mrjibbles wrote: »

...

Maybe it's because a free offer could take money aware from MSE due to the amount of affiliate links on this site which people may click on and not realise they are earning MSE money

I may get banned now for saying that which would be unjust as there are affiliate links on here...

TBH Money Saving Expert are very open at how then earn enough money to pay staff, pay for the website etc;

On this very page is a link where people can read all about it.

its called 'How the site is funded'.

Sparhawke

borders_dude wrote: »

TBH Money Saving Expert are very open at how then earn enough money to pay staff, pay for the website etc;

On this very page is a link where people can read all about it.

its called 'How the site is funded'.

Expanding on this in a nutshell basically the site is funded by affliate links, and only if they happen to be best for the customer in terms of money saving and those that are used will generally have some way to distinguish them.

MSE do realise people like to get referrals so have one forum dedicated to that, I have been on some forums where all you will see is advertisements, this way is better

spiritus

mrjibbles wrote: »

Fair enough on the joking but there are people here and everywhere as you know who cant! get jobs

There is no harm in teaching people how to make some money online whilst they look for a job, or look to supplement their income. If you know what you are doing, it is very easy to build up a website and have it on autopilot given the right foundation.

The website is not indexed because I only created it a couple of days ago and i am not looking to rank it in Google to find people who are legitimately looking to bring in some more money given some work and time. There are a insane amount of spam links, sites up looking to trick people into money and I am certainly not one of them.

I have a couple of people who have paid an interested and do hope given a few weeks they will come back and say thankyou on the forum to demonstrate you do not have to be a chip on the soulder, sales orientated spammer to help people

And by the way the picture was taken in our local pub garden last year and i am sorry if i look cheesy and not Tom Cruise sitting next to my next Porsche

I cant believe what a cold reception I have got from wanting to help people, just because I had some links. Fair enough its the rules being a human being, i did not realise and have taken them down.

I appreciate there is a rules section but being an IT guy and male, i never read a manual

Apologises for being normal and not Superman, although..maybe i should change my website picture for last years party costume for a more lighthearted reception

Rob

Looks like Mr Jibbles and me have a couple of things in common. I also mistakenly had a link in my signature pointing to one of my own websites. It was removed and I abide by the rules of this board (although it did bring some pretty good traffic in lol).

And I also make some money from affiliate websites and it IS that easy.

My first affiliate site was created in May 2007 and in this month I am on the verge of making £ 1000 for the very first time in one calendar month.

It can be done !

StaffsSW

ElaineAllkids wrote: »

from 'sequence'
"Ok, the above isn't entirely serious, but making money from ads/afiliate links takes far more work than a normal job to start with and nearly as much once you get going"

Completely untrue - I've been doing it 8 years now and found that most successful Affiliates so enjoy this type of work that there's a fine line between work and hobby, and as most of us work from home it's so easy to slip onto the computer to add some more content/pages, create another site etc.

I have to agree - the more successful affiliates that I speak to are all focused or based on areas and niches that they know well and enjoy working with, such as fishing, cars or other specific hobbies.

ElaineAllkids wrote: »

But on the other hand it's also true that if I didn't touch my site for months it would happily chug away creating a very nice income.

From my own experience of letting sites go dormant without fresh content, it didn't really come as a surprise that google traffic soon dwindled, and I only really got long tail searches coming in, and much lower conversions.
I quit my full time career last summer to "play around on the 'net", and I have to admit I became ultra lazy for 3 months and besides caning hours on the PS3 and hooning around in a sportscar all I really did was keep an eye on stats. My reality check came when I started to look closer at traffic volumes and competitor performance. It took about 6-8 weeks to get back up to the traffic levels I enjoyed before my unintentional sabbatical.

I follow a few good SEO bloggers on twitter, and one common theme that comes through is the effort/returns ratio. The more effort you put into a site, the more it will return.

SunnySusie

Good to see this thread is still going! I haven't checked back on it in a while but thought I would drop by to share this link from the official google blogs.

It's a nice round up of all the information they share regarding how their search engines work, and it is more than some people think. As any amateur webmaster will tell you, getting your site ranking well in Google search results is half the battle. A good search position can be the difference between all and nothing!

It is definitely true that enjoying what you do will always lead to better results and more time spent on your site. This is especially true if you have other pressures on your time whether that be house work or PS3 playing !

I just think that if your only motivation is the money and you nolonger have a boss breathing down your neck then it could be a struggle. I spend every free moment updating sites - many of which make nothing. But it's all fun!

Updating Sites
In my opinion it depends a lot on the topic, obviously tech blogs need a constant stream of new information, but I was looking at some Pregnancy information on a site last night and the things I was looking up wouldn't have changed in the last 100 million years (or however old the human species is !). If that site has the "best" article then why would Google want to move it down the ranking just because is hasn't been updated? It just doesn't makes sense.

Sure, a competitor could get the same information up but they will need to work a 100 times harder than you to overtake. If you are already number one then you are getting most visitors and if your content meets their needs then you will be getting natural back links.

But like I said, some sectors are very different to others. I prefer writing about slow moving topics where an article is going to be just as good in 10 years time as it is now. That's not to say I don't update pages from time to time, mostly if I read something and think "that info would make my page better". I don't believe there is any need to update just for the sake of it.

We know that Google also places value on the age of a site, so if a page has been number 1 since 1999 then it must be pretty good!

The priority should be to make sure your site represents "up to date" information. So if you blog about mobile phones you will need to do it hourly! If you blog about Ancient Greece then some of your articles will only need to be written once. Of course one of those topics is likely to convert better than the other !

plumfin

Hi all, really interesting looking at this. I want to start an affiliate site, but have puzzled hard over my subject. I am an avid reader, so would a forum/blog about favourite books be too wide a subject ? thanks for your help and advice

Sparhawke

Hi Susie, I have my small site ranking at #15 in google out of a SERP of 13.3M but cannot seem to get any higher, is there anything you could recommend I do?

No matter how hard I try I just cannot break into that elusive top 10 lol

~~

Plum, I wouldn't start with getting your own site right now until you get a following, what I would recommend is going to hubpages and setting up an account, sign up for adsense and paste that code into the settings...and start writing and reviewing, comment on other peoples hubs and in time you will get visitors...

The money will be tiny at first, mere pennies for slaving all day it would seem...in time though you hubs will start to get ranked and you will gain, hopefully.

Getting a dedicated website for a newbie is a mistake most times, the domain name you choose will either kill it or make it, and 99% of the time it will kill it

Start to recognise how to use keywords and search terms and you will do better

spiritus

Sparhawke wrote: »

Hi Susie, I have my small site ranking at #15 in google out of a SERP of 13.3M but cannot seem to get any higher, is there anything you could recommend I do?

No matter how hard I try I just cannot break into that elusive top 10 lol

It depends on the strength of the sites that are 14 places higher than you.

If these sites haven't been optimised for the keyword you are targetting then with some work you should break into the top 10.

Build plenty of backlinks with your keyword phrase as anchor text.

Keep creating new and original content

Write articles on Ezine using your anchor keyword phrase in the resource box.

If you prefer to pm me your keyword and website I can enter it into Market Samurai and Micro Niche Finder which will tell you how competitive your keyword is

plumfin

Thanks for the advice, Sparhawke - but what is a hub? something like blogger.com?